What is the Baldur’s Gate 3 launch time?
The Baldur’s Gate PC launch time is 8am PST / 11am EST / 4pm BST / 5pm CET. Thursday, August 3. For players in parts of Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, the game will release at or after midnight, meaning that it will technically launch on Friday, August 4.
I'm so hyped for this game! I've put over 100 hours into the early access content and I can't wait to see the full version.
I'm curious - what kind of characters are y'all going to play? I usually go with a rogue for my first playthrough in RPG games, with decent persuade/deception skills so I can try out some of the dialogue options to influence other characters.
For my first playthrough I think I'm going Dragonborn, but I haven't put much thought into the rest! I remember having a lot of fun with a 2H weapon in DoS 2, so I might use that. I can't wait to try out all the spells as that was easily my favorite part in DoS 2.
I’m going to give a half-orc vengeance paladin a go with polearm mastery. For party members I think I’ll go with Shadowheart, Wyll and Gale but I might replace one of the spellcasters later on with Minsc.
I honestly have no idea. I'm just going to play around with the descriptions and options and decide in the moment. If there's some kind of lone wolf perk like DOS I might try to go with a small party and be sneaky. I did want to add everyone I met in DOS:2, but I keep getting the desire to see how approaching encounters with smaller numbers works.
I think when it comes to combat, having less people massively reduces your ability to fight, much more so than in DOS2, even more so without any compensation for having a smaller party.
All in all, not necessarily a bad thing, it just means you have to tackle problems much more creatively than others.
As far as I know there's no Lone Wolf equivalent, although you can just choose to not travel with any companions. It is easier to do stealth in BG3 - for starters, they added a Group Sneak key (something that was sorely missing from DOS2), and there are plenty of times you can use stealth and/or exploration to circumvent combat encounters while still gaining XP.
I was really torn between a human storm sorcerer or a half-orc battle master but ultimately decided to go with a gold dwarf hunter using a heavy crossbow. Fits in very well with my preferred party companions (Karlach and Shadowheart as frontline, me and Gale as backline) and has Talk to Animals which is really nice to have in Larian games. I also just love the visual of a grizzled dwarf bounty hunter with his pet raven (taking the Beast Tamer choice for Find Familiar on character creation).
I'm going to go Druid. I usually like druids in general, but I heard you can actually talk with animals and even in TTRPGs it's rare that DMs bother with that.
It's so crazy, you can have entire conversations with some animals. I haven't tried speaking with all of them, but it's possible there are even sidequests given to you by animals. Players who don't have the ability to cast Speak With Animals will just miss that content on their playthrough.
I'm much the same when I usually make my characters lmao. Oh, you've given me a smorgasbord of different races and classes to choose from? Cool, I reckon I'll roll a halfling rogue or a human fighter, thanks.
I'm very excited as I've only recently discovered how fun CRPGs are. In preparation I've started playing through Divinity Original Sins II and am up to Act 2 so far.
The scene from the Livestream with the vampire and druid bear was so out there I can't wait to see what other crazy/interesting things are in the final game.
I've also been rekindling my love for CRPGs by playing through D:OS2. I first played it a couple years ago, but got distracted part way through. Going back instantly hooked me again. Can't wait for BG3.
It's absolutely nothing like most CRPGS but play Disco Elysium if you get the opportunity. I've dabbled in plenty of CRPGS in my time but this one was a masterpiece and revitalised my love fo rthe genre.
Owlcat's works are also worth looking into. They are amongst the most honest adaptation of ttrpg system to a computer game. Bonus if you prefer Pathfinder to DnD. I am salivating over the 40k Rogue Trader they are making.
Have you tried the Rogue Trader playtest? I put in about 10 hours, which doesn't cover all the content at all, and I really enjoyed it. The combat was a bit hit and miss for me, but the story and the characters were the real standout.
I'm curious. What are the chances of mods existing to bring other D&D storylines to life? In theory, a lot of people have written a lot of content, and while they take some liberties from the rules, I don't think there's anything that can't be worked with.
Can anyone comment about how realistic it would be to bring other stories to leverage this engine?
I heard there will be modding. And Larian will not make a dungeon master mode. So I am not sure. I know Solasta (D&D 5e game from small company) did a dungeon master mode and you can get other modules from the community. But not sure how much can be done with Larian's game with just modding.
My partner and I are so excited to play this together. We both are taking time off work to play on release day. I think they are more excited to play than I am, they already have at least 3 playthroughs planned.
Adding on to this, how about for steam deck? I see that it's been Deck verified but I have a lot of games in my library that are supposedly Deck verified but are unplayable (Horizon Zero Dawn and Remnant 2 stand out in memory).
I could just install it and try for myself, and likely will, but before I commit to a 100+gb download I'd love to hear if anyone else has tried.
I saw this in an article about the Xbox-s that mentioned the Steam Deck
Larian Studios head of publishing Michael Douse said that playing it on the handheld(Steam Deck) is "absolutely wild" and that, while it won't be verified on launch, the team is actively working towards it. This is a unique approach. Rather than developing for each console simultaneously, Larian Studios is rolling out Baldur's Gate 3 when it's ready for each. First, it'll arrive on PC, then PS5, and then Xbox or the Steam Deck--whichever comes first. While the wait might be longer, it saves the game from being delayed across the board.
The launcher will launch through Steam and you select direct x or Vulkan with it. I believe if you log into the launcher you can do cross platform saves.
I will be using my Xbox controller, so I will hold the Xbox logo and right stick to move the curser to start game and right bumper as the left click. Then it will launch.
Regarding the No Preload part, what happens to the ~80GB early access build I have installed right now, does that all get binned and I'll still have to download another 122GB?
Played around 80h of Early Access and I even bought the old games and played through them before release to catch up on the world. I enjoy Baldur's Gate 3's combat a lot more, but that's mainly because I loathe real-time-with-pause combat and only suffered through it in Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity and Planescape:Torment because the story and characters grabbed me enough to keep going. The game is very different and makes many changes from PnP DND ruleset, and has many "Larianisms" (spells causing surfaces, water making you weaker to lightning/cold but resistant to fire height giving advantage/disadvantage to attacks) but none of them detract from the experience. If you're not a D&D purists you will probably enjoy it after some getting used to it. As for the story and characters, it's hard to say much as we only had access to the small portion that is (not even the entirety of) Act 1 during Early Access, but what's there has been incredible.
In short, it's not like the old games, but I think considering it's been 23 years since the last game and this one is developed by an entirely different studio, it would be incredibly unfair to judge it based on that.
Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed reply!
You'll think i'm crazy but I love real time with pause haha. I think I'll need to watch a decent chunk of game play footage, and try to wrap my head around the mechanics to see if it's up my alley.